


Love Languages

by MildlyRebelliousMint



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, Love Languages, Mentions of Violence, cass doesn't know how to enter a room like a normal person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-08 11:39:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15242574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildlyRebelliousMint/pseuds/MildlyRebelliousMint
Summary: Cassandra listens to how her brothers say "I love you."





	Love Languages

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this was originally supposed to be more angsty, but I am a certified Sap (TM).
> 
> Thanks to RedWritingHood and LuckyNumberBlack for beta reading. <3 Any mistakes are probably because I'm an idiot who sends multiple documents. I almost forgive RedWritingHood - she knows what she did. LuckyNumberBlack has bought me comicbooks before, so they own my soul.

**Touch and Words**

 

Alfred the cat has made her lap into his bed. His soft, purring body is pleasant and warm.

“I will poison you a thousand times over!”

“Just move!”

He just wants warmth and sleep. Cats are easy to please.

“Damian! Put that down!”

She’s sleepy, too. It’s contagious. The living room is soothing colors: earthy browns and quiet purples. The couch is nice and squishy.

There’s more shouting from the kitchen, but words take concentration and she lets them slip away.

She drifts a little, until she hears someone enter the room. She cracks an eye open to see Dick dropping a few daggers onto the coffee table. His shoulders are wound tights and his movements are too restricted. Stressed, a little sad. “I swear I’m going to let them murder each other next time.”

“Game.”

His face rearranges. He doesn’t understand.

She tries again. “Like… cards? Quality time.”

“You’re _kidding_.”

She shakes her head.

“I guess I get Damian,” Dick says, taking a seat beside her. Alfred gives him an unappreciative look. “But Tim?”

She shrugs. She only knows what she sees. She considers Dick’s puzzlement. “You… say ‘I love you’ sometimes… the _words_ .” He’s watching, considering carefully. “They say that… _different_.”

He laughs, just a little, and there’s relief behind it. “There has to be a way that doesn’t involve me tearing all my hair out.”

There’s a lull where Alfred stretches out and pokes her with his soft, round paws. Dick smiles at him. Cassandra yawns.

“I don’t… say that enough,” Dick says, “I guess I’m not that good at this either.”

She shakes her head. She’s lost track of how often he says it. Ruffling Damian’s hair, giving Tim a pat on the shoulder as he walks by, lightly elbowing Jason while he tries not to laugh at a dark joke.

“All the time,” she tells him,“Different.”

Dick smiles a lot when he isn’t happy, but his smile is free and his eyes crinkle in the right way. He pulls her into a hug against his side, and Alfred jumps down. Dick laughs, and it’s lighter this time, “Sorry.”

Her hands were forged in pain. No words of comfort and touching was for hurting. She sometimes wonders if she’s made of bloody and the sick crack of bones. She still sees her fingers sinking into the man’s throat, twisting, the fear in the fiber of his being.

Dick sees something else. She doesn’t know what, exactly. He wants her to know she’s loved and that’s enough for now.

She hugs him back and with her words, to be sure he hears, says, “I love you, too.”

 

**Gifts**

 

She snuggles into her silky blankets. She likes her room. She has a collection of things now. Hers. When Barbara had asked for her favorite color, she’d thought about Batgirl and said “black.” It wasn’t the answer Barbara wanted, but she and Dick bought her black and yellow bed covers anyway. When they brought them to her, Dick handed her a Robin plushie, too. “It can be whichever brother is bothering you the least.” It made her laugh and it didn’t upset Barbara like her color choice, either. Cassandra had felt warm and giddy. Things given to her with care, with an underlying “I love you.”

She has lots of things like that now. Her shelves are chocked full of audio books about adventures in pretend places and picture books about animals who talk. Jason leaves the audio books in his safehouses with sticky notes on them. She can read her name, but he doodles her old Batgirl mask on them instead. Damian sneaks the picture books under her door. She isn’t supposed to know, but she hears the footfalls of a child when she’s there.

The top of her nightstand is decorated with roses and the inside is crammed full of candy. Bruce hands her chocolate bars periodically (maybe because she’d said she likes chocolate ice cream best. maybe because, even though the bat symbol means everything to Cassandra, Barbara insists that crime fighting tools aren’t gifts.) and Stephanie consistently finds candies that Cassandra’s life will never be complete without.

Tim installed a small TV screen and a GameCube when they started playing Super Smash Bros together. The game was frustrating, until she learned to watch Tim from the corner of her eye. She can’t read intent in pixels, but she can read intent in Tim. It’s been a long time since he’s won.

Before, she never would have imagined having so much love in her life. Barbara worries that they’ve taken Cassandra from one life of violence to another. _More_ _abuse._ It’s strange, because for once Cassandra feels a flower growing in the gnarled thorns.

 

**Words and Gifts**

 

Damian hides his love in harsh words and scowls. He’s tense with restraint, holding it inside until no one is looking. He doesn’t move like an assassin exactly. His training is visible, but the intent is different. Not a predator, a guardian. She hopes she moves like that when she’s watching Gotham. She doesn’t think so.

She often catches him replacing the make-up Dick uses to hide his bruises or leaving books in the study where Jason will find them. Once, she saw him planting snacks in range of Tim’s workspace.

He isn’t always opposed to affection. A “good work, Robin” from Bruce has him standing tall with pride. He likes compliments from Dick too, but it’s not the same.

Damian is curled up on the couch, drawing with wide strokes. She watches, unseen, from atop one of the cabinets, fascinated by precision that creates instead of tearing down.

Dick walks in from the kitchen, a steaming mug is his hand. He smiles when he sees Damian and steps over to peer at his work. “That’s really good, kiddo.”

Damian snorts, but the tilt of his chin is pleased. A little pride. “Compared to your scribbles.”

“You brat,” Dicks says, shoving Damian’s arm. It’s light, but Damian gives little resistance and tips over onto the cushions, clutching his sketchbook to his chest. Safety here. He isn’t trying as hard to impress.

“I speak only the truth, Richard,” Damian says. His face is schooled in seriousness, but his posture is playful.

Dick rests against the arm of the couch, facing away from Damian. He takes a drink. It’s barely in her view, but the corner of his lip pulls up. “You know, I think Titus _loved_ my drawing of him.”

Titus had not cared one way or the other.

“Titus is proper and would never speak ill,” Damian says.

He cranes his neck to reply and Cassandra thinks about all her picture books. Damian responds to words. She searches her brain for some she might like to tell him.

 

**Time**

 

Tim doesn’t say “I love you” as often as he says “I love you, too.” He comes alive when Bruce or Dick ask him to join them on patrol; propelled into action with eager energy. Sometimes when Alfred offers him tea, he’ll sit in the kitchen and watch him cook.

When things get bad, he retreats into his room or the cave. The solitude just makes the marks under his eyes deeper.

She pulls herself into his room through the window. He’s hunched over his computer, scribbling notes onto a yellow pad as stress and tension rolls from his shoulders. There are notes scattered all over his desk, but she doesn’t feel like trying to decipher them. There are dishes and laundry pilled on the floor. Alfred hasn’t been in here.

He catches her in the corner of his eyes and he twists around in confusion. “Cass? Do you need something?”

She shrugs, searching the room for something to do that won’t disturb him. She picks up his DS off the nightstand and shows it to him.

“Oh, uh, sure.” He turns back to his work. “Go ahead.”

She climbs onto his bed and plops onto her stomach. Tim looks behind him again, eyes blinking in surprise again. “You… can take it,” Tim says, slowly, hesitantly, “If you want.”

She shakes her head, flicking the DS open and on.

Tim’s posture softens and he smiles, small and weary. “Okay.” _I love you, too._

He keeps working, but his shoulders shift, gentle and fluid.

 

**Acts**

 

“Black Bat,” Barbara says, voice deep and mechanical in Cassandra’s ear, “Your patrol is up. Red Robin and Spoiler are clocking in.

Normally, she hates when it’s time to switch. She can do more than they let her. Normally. As it is, she’s spent most of the night watching decrepit buildings crumble from different gargoyles. She hit one mugger ( _one_ hit), tied two robbers together, and scared off four separate vandals. Stephanie and Tim could handle that easily. Also, she’s hungry.

“Okay,” she tells Barbara. She surveys the area from her current gargoyle. Closest place is… Jason.

She swings down from her perch, to a lower building. She runs along the edge, using her moment to jump from building to building, until she reaches Jason’s apartment building. She grapples to his window and slides it open.

The living room is dim and sparsely furnished, merging directly into the kitchen. Convenient. She walks past one of his bookshelves on her way and the thought of so many words makes her head spin.

The kitchen smells orange-y, like the rooms in the manor smell after Alfred cleans them. The pans hang above the sink and there are cups filled with big spoons and knifes. She checks the cupboard first. Dry pasta and rice, tomato sauce, several bags with different white powders, green and brown spices… Things that need to be cooked. She tries the fridge and the light irritates her eyes. Raw meat, uncooked hot dogs, condiments, milk, and some vegetables. She’s taking a bag of tomatoes out of the fridge when she hears Jason’s careful footsteps. He flicks the light on and she has to blink to clear the sting. He’s wearing his costume and aiming a gun at her. His muscles relax when he sees her. He holds his gun in place, but he has no intention of shooting. “It’s 4:00am.”

She doesn’t know what his point is, so she shrugs.

He sighs, holstering his gun. “What? Didn’t pack any Batcookies for patrol?”

She smiles, then pulls a tomato out of the bag and raises it to her mouth.

“Hang on,” Jason says, reaching out a hand, “I was going to make something with that.”

She frowns at him.

“You can have some, too,” he says, “Jeez.”

He means to help. He tries to pull away, to be aloof, but loving comes naturally to him. He doesn’t hide it like Damian, but it isn’t an act of pride either. He cares more than he wants to and it hurts.

She drops the tomato back in and hands him the bag.

He sets his helmet on the counter and walks around to start pulling ingredients from the cupboard and fridge. She takes a seat and watches him chop tomatoes like it’s the only reasonable thing to do.

Loving is natural. She likes that idea.

**Author's Note:**

> Tim is time because it's one letter away. Not really, but I spend way too long mulling over the nonexistent implications.
> 
> "Parent my kid? I don't have Tim for that." - Jack Drake, probably


End file.
